Why were ships so fragile in DS9

The BoP thing has an explanation: There are two types of Bird of Prey vessels used by the Klingons. The small scout-ship types (the one from Star Trek III, Kruge's ship. And the ones that fly in packs like in DS9) and the Heavy Cruiser Variants that are nearly as big as a Galaxy-Class (the ones from "Yesterday's Enterprise").

We could always say that a deceptive appearance of size is one of the effects (or side effects) of using a cloak. Large ships might wish to present a smaller target but cannot become fully invisible without jeopardizing shields/sensors/power allocation/whatnot, so they apply partial power to the cloak and become smaller. And small ships might wish to appear more threatening... This also accounts for the varying size of the Defiant!

TNG seemed to follow the rule that the enemy ship always had to be as large as the Enterprise

Click to expand...

Umm, where?

Most of the adversaries were depicted as puny, with the big saucer of the hero ship hulking over them (starting with Ornarans, moving on to Okona and his troublesome almost-in-laws, the Klingon BoP, Pakleds, Acamarians...). Others were depicted the opposite way, their mighty shadow falling on the heroes (starting with the Romulans, then with the Borg, the Tamarians, the various space beasts). Basically only the Ferengi were given ships of "heroic size"; Klingons later got their corresponding design, but they always also had diversity.

Timo Saloniemi

Click to expand...

When they were dealing with the "Big Adversaries" they tended to inflate the size of the ships, at least from my view.

When they deal with somewhat harmless aliens, the ships were 'regular' size.

Look at the Ferengi ship in The Last Out Post. Then Cardassian Ship in The Wounded. Or the Tamarian ship in Darmok. Big suckers, pretty much the size of the Enterprise.

As far as TNG, it looks like they only used large scale ships for the Bird of Preys; they always looked roughly the same size as the Enterprise to me.

I think they went with capital ships because back then, because the battles were slower, shorter, and they wanted to establish a threat to the Enterprise.

Flash forward to DS9, and you never see the huge B.O.Ps again. They're all smaller, faster, yet still deadly.

The Jem Hadar ships were smaller but but had a huge advantage, which DS9 portrayed perfectly.

Been so long since I saw DS9 I'd forgotten about these battle sequences. They look so cheesy now.

The station is under attack from all sides, and sisko takes a dramatic pause before giving the order to fire, and without specifying a target either. No wonder so many torpedoes disappeared into the black without hitting anything.

The producers have to keep things Dramatic, but there's a fine line between the situation being perilous and the situation being impossible. If the station and Defiant's weapons are as such that they can knock out a bird of prey in one dead-on shot, that works fine when they're fending off an entire fleet of ships. But if there was only one cruiser, it would have to be far feistier to prove a challenge.

Waiting till the last moment also allows for the Klingons to veer off in case they were just doing their standard posturing.

And specifying targets is the one unrealistic thing that Trek captains are typically guilty of. There's something like fifty of them there - but the station is perfectly capable of firing at as many. Sisko (or Picard, or Kirk) should say something less tactical and more strategic, such as "Inflict necessary casualties, but don't go overboard" or "Save ammo" or "Go all out, perhaps they will take the hint", after which the gunners would do their job. And Sisko sort of says the second thing, by specifying that only every second launcher be used at first.

Hmm... I'm not quite sure about "the opposite" here - Dominion vessels were not outright said to be better shielded than other opponents of Starfleet, if that is what you mean.

True, the Odyssey did not blow up even the smallest Dominion vessels with one shot, or three, or five (quite possibly, one attacker was destroyed eventually by the starship, but two assuredly were not). But at that point, rules of engagement may have called for wounding shots, similar to the ones that so often were fired by Picard. Thereafter, we saw a fairly ordinary succession of individually seemingly impotent hits accumulating into a simplistic fireball destruction whenever the Alpha fleets fought their Gamma counterparts.

In contrast, the dialogue evidence for the vulnerability of Alpha shields is clear, and the elimination or at least alleviation of the vulnerability is something of a plot point in "Call to Arms".

Prior to "Call to Arms", starfleet's shields were ineffective against dominion weaponry.

I was referring to after "Call to Arms" - the dominion heavy ships or cardassian orbital platforms (beefed up by dominion tech) were repeatedly shown brutalising starfleet/klingon/romulan ships. Despite their shields working efficiently - the dominion weapons were't slipping around the shields by technobabble, but punching right through them.

Despite their shields working efficiently - the dominion weapons were't slipping around the shields by technobabble, but punching right through them.

Click to expand...

Isn't this more like the definition of the shields not working efficiently?

That is, the likeliest explanation of what we see is that the Alphans had restored some worth to their shields by "Call to Arms", but they never got normal performance out of them against Dominion phased polaron beams or the Dominion-upgraded Cardassian beam weapons. In fights with "standard" opponents, the shields still worked normally enough, such as in "Message in a Bottle".

Despite their shields working efficiently - the dominion weapons were't slipping around the shields by technobabble, but punching right through them.

Click to expand...

Isn't this more like the definition of the shields not working efficiently?

Click to expand...

No.
You see, shields were established to have an upper limit to what they can withstand - even if they're efficient at stopping/deflecting what is used against them.

In "Call to Arms", it's UNAMBIGUOUSLY established that starfleet shields can stop dominion weaponry efficiently.
As I said, beyond that point, the dominion weapons weren't slipping around the shields by technobabble, but punching right through them.

In WotW and Call to Arms, both times you had starships fighting orbital installations, it is highly probable that orbital stations have enough firepower to devastate a individual ship, thus the requirement for large fleets to take losses while the orbital defenses are knocked out.

Strangely enough, in Call of Arms, with the Dominion and Cardassian fleets attacking, they were having no success. Only when Dukat order the fleet to target a specific area was when the shields went down temporarily. And still not enough to board the station.

The Klingons dropped the shields and boarded the station.

DS9 always played up the angle that the Dominion was somehow superior in weapons. It was really subtle.

Like, you'd never see a Federation ship directly destroy a Dominion ship, at least on screen. Except for the Defiant or Defiant type vessel.

They also switched to from shield bubbles to tight shields, where with fire scorching the hull, but not necessarily damaging the ship.

That's what's so strange. You see Klingon ships destroying Jem Hadar ships, Cardassian doing it, but never a Starfleet vessel, except for the Defiant, a Defiant type vessel, and maybe a Runabout.

And even then with the Runabout, the Bug ship's vulnerable point was given to Odo, otherwise they would have been destroyed.

At most you'll see a Starfleet ship firing on a Dominion ship, but not destroying it, not in all 4 seasons we've seen the Domonion. Whether they show it or not might not mean anything, but it does give it an odd feel to the whole concept.